The Russos were in talks to make a Star Wars with their old MCU buddy Kevin Feige

Of all the many—many—Star Wars film projects that Disney has announced, and then shelved, over the last few years (as the franchise has retreated to the relative safety of television), few are as intriguing as the one supposedly masterminded by Kevin Feige. Feige is, of course, one of the most successful movie executives in human history; widely credited as the architect of Disney’s ridiculously lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe and, maybe even more shockingly, generally not referred to as a piece of shit by any of the people who work with or for him, Feige carries a huge amount of clout at the company. The mere hint, floated back in 2019, that the Marvel Studios president (an avowed Star Wars fan) might be stepping over to Disney’s other big IP to produce a movie instantly kicked off rumors that, among other things, he was being situated as a potential replacement for long-time Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy.

None of that came to pass, of course; despite hiring Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness writer Michael Waldron to potentially work on a script, Feige’s Star Wars never materialized, with Variety breaking news last month that the movie was “indefinitely shelved.” (Don’t feel bad for Waldron: Feige hired him to pen the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars last year.) We’ll probably never know exactly what happened here—whether Feige felt he might be over-extending himself, or whether forces at the company pushed back at a potential expansion—but we do have a little more info this week about who could have been involved in the potential movie, i.e., Feige’s most relentless money-makers, Joe and Anthony Russo.

Per Variety, the Infinity War and Endgame directors stopped by the Smartless podcast this week to reveal, among other things, that they had been in “early talks” to work on Feige’s Star Wars movie in some capacity. Said talks didn’t go anywhere—the Russos were, presumably, already pursuing their very eclectic post-Marvel plans, including their-yet-to-release, wildly ambitious spy series Citadel—but it’s still a fascinating counterfactual to consider. It says something about the general tenor of this potential project that we can’t even begin to imagine what the end result might have been; these three guys have delivered some extremely satisfying blockbuster fare over the years, but it’s hard to imagine what new creative impulses, if any, they would have brought to Star Wars. (Although, given the limbo the franchise’s film hopes are currently floating, in post-Rise Of Skywalker, maybe “satisfying blockbuster fare” is exactly what’s been missing.)